Having played other MMOs does not make you qualified to have an opinion on a game you've never played. FFXI does have a grind, but it is unlike any other MMO out there. The intensity of trying to time your weapon skills and magic to land at exactly the right time, the dance-like coordination with your teammates, the variety of enemy strengths and weaknesses, learning a basic programming language to write macros and having them work flawlessly in a pinch - everything about it is exciting and you have to be at the top of your game to succeed. Every single mob fight feels like a boss battle and every kill is a win. Top that with some of the best writing of any Final Fantasy game and it's a winning combination and technical marval that I cannot believe was achieved in 2003.

You may as well be saying that Dark Souls is nothing but a grind, but you're missing that the grind is the fun part.